Cassie Schutte of Health Window, a solution provider company at the marcus evans PharmaMarketing Summit 2013, on empowering sales reps with data on why their drugs work.

“Pharmaceutical companies need to prove that their drugs work in the real world and that their competitors’ products might not have the same real-world compliance and outcome benefits,” suggests Cassie Schutte, Chief Executive Officer, Health Window. With the average compliance rate at around 50 per cent, how could healthcare providers get the expected clinical benefits when patients are not taking their medication? “Companies would attract the biggest stakeholders in the market if they could demonstrate the real-world efficacy of their drugs and how they could cut hospital costs,” Schutte adds.
Health Window is a solution provider company at the upcoming marcus evans PharmaMarketing Summit 2013, in Palm Beach, Florida, May 8-10. Here, Schutte shares his thoughts on pharmaceutical marketing, proving real-world drug efficacy, and improving compliance.

Why are clinical trial results not enough anymore?
Clinical trials are done in very controlled circumstances, where they ensure people take their medication to prove that they work. However, compliance in the real world is around 50 per cent, so it is impossible to get the same disease outcomes and clinical benefits as in clinical trials.

What implications does this have for pharmaceutical product marketing?
Salesforces go out and sell pharmaceutical products as having good clinical benefits, when in reality the products work half the time. Where salesforces previously competed on clinical benefits, that is no longer a product differentiator.

How could they show that they work in the real world?
Our system collects information on real-world efficacy and improves compliance by engaging patients with powerful, relationship-based adherence programs. We can monitor their compliance journey and disease outcomes, and quantify back to the doctor that the product now has real-world compliance. Combined with pharmacy data, we then benchmark the data against competitive products.
Compliance can differentiate your product, but you need to be able to quantify and prove it, and monitor patients between doctor visits.
What would better engage patients, doctors and the salesforce, for better results?

It is easy to make the wrong assumptions about what drives compliance. For example, pharmaceutical companies assume that patient education would improve compliance, but knowledge does not help obese people lose weight. They know they should exercise and eat right, but do not apply the knowledge. You need to engage people in a relationship to influence positive outcomes and compliance. There must be trust to identify and overcome obstacles to compliance. Reps are not trained to sell compliance benefits, but it is important to link the compliance program to the sales team. Rather, to equip the sales team with data and tools to sell compliance benefits well.

Any final comments?
The efficacy issue is valid to physicians and funders. In the US, five per cent of the population is on chronic drugs and consumes a third of healthcare costs. Many countries are funding the excessive hospital costs following from poor compliance.
What pharma companies are overlooking is that if they built real-world efficacy and compliance, they could not benefit large sales growth, but also go to the big stakeholders and show how they could save on hospitalization costs that follow from poor compliance. Often funders work in silos, and have different people managing medication and hospitalization costs. The reality is that if they spent a little more on compliance, they would save a tremendous amount on hospital beds, which are extremely costly.

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